Serenade
by The Tesseract Seraph
Summary: Homage and sequel to Emsi Ceru's Dignity. Sometimes, all you need is a little reassurance that the angels haven't forgotten you entirely.


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**Author's Note:** Homage and sequel to Emsi Ceru's beautiful "Dignity". The usual warnings apply.

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"Serenade"

  
  
Good morning.  
  
Dawn is the best and brightest time of day--the early bird always catches the wyrm, and you have to get up pretty early to fool some people. I suppose that's why I always make it a point to catch a sunrise every time I'm planetside, to spend my hours by myself. Dawn--the hour of whitening, but without any Gnosis to be found.  
  
Good morning! Simeon's hull is still glowing-hot from re-entry, but is still but a pale mirror of the sun itself. She doesn't mind me perched on her shoulders--she never minds, patient and tolerant of the things I myself can't stand. But then they say our anima mirrors in ourself what we can't acknowledge, and Simeon is my angel, watching the red sunrise with me.  
  
Red--red, red, there's blood on my gloves. Funny; I can't remember the last time I killed someone. No--I remember now, I'm not under orders because this _emptiness_ inside my head swallows all the sound. Blood does make noise. So why, if I'm not under orders--where did these spatters and streaks of carbonized gore on Simeon's hull come from?  
  
I remember--a corpse. Mmm, no, not a corpse--a girl, with fear like rich wine. Yes! That was it--she lived here, my corpse, ma belle mort. Lovely in life, lovelier in death. Where did I stash the body? That, I don't remember--or, rather, I won't tell. And that's an element of humor--not telling everything at face value. Let 'em assume! But, soft--what light across yonder horizon breaks? 'Tis the east--and that's the sun. Its rays doth the numerous skies incarnadine, making the blue run red--ah, red, red, Rubedo! The color of treachery, the color of my beloved traitor.  
  
Or this girl's blood. It's well past time I dump her body; I'd take it back to the garden but--it's gone. And that's another element of humor--Le Jardin des Cadavres, my little garden built of corpses, has died! Poof--disappeared into hydrogen and helium atoms, shredded apart by Second Miltia's cruel atmosphere. Or maybe not, but I didn't go look. Away with you, corpse--see how you bounce like a mutilated doll; do you like the taste of gravity, I wonder? Well, you'll get used to it during your dirt nap. Though worms destroy that beautiful, beautiful body, you'll see god in your flesh. Or maybe you already saw him, and what of that? But I'm getting out of order again.  
  
The sun is up! The birds are awake, a tiny feathered choir that definitely _isn't_ angels. No, something's killed the angels and their song--_that_ Song--is...gone. I can't hear it anymore, not even in my dreams. That--Song, the absence that leaves the emptiness that swallows all the noise. Even the girl's screams. No, she's dead--death has swallowed her screams. Death--I broke her neck. But it doesn't matter now; she's dead, her suffering is dead with her. My darling Kirschwasser--no, that can't be right, they're dead, too. Everyone is dead except me! Ha--a whole world of corpses, with one man left to watch the dawn.  
  
Did I kill them all? I couldn't tell you. (Another element of humor--it's so damn funny, don't you think?) I took their world by the right of the sword. And now--off Simeon's shoulder, to see this brand new world I've claimed, that has such people in it. (It's mine! Ha!) But it isn't the one I wanted. I'm not sure I can simply put this one back in the packaging and return it. Well, recycling's the popular thing. I'll just let this one go. Or return it to its component atoms.  
  
But, hush, patience, patience. There's still a few more minutes of dawn left. No sense in spoiling it with these thoughts of violence. The sweet fight for death needn't continue right now. My angel watches the sunrise while I dwell down here on the ground, a groundling, unable to pay for better seats to watch the show. I! Without coin, but I suppose they don't pay me enough for my job. Not enough to find a house, certainly--the foxes have their holes and the birds their nests, but the Son of God has no place to rest his head. It's fitting, but I don't feel the need to stop searching for hello! A pair of turquoise eyes, and might I pluck them out of your head to pay my way to heaven?  
  
No, wait. I remember _you_--you were there, weren't you? A seraph presiding over my garden of corpses, you catch my hand and radiate not fear but a quiet kind of sadness. "You?" I inquire, and you nod: "Me." I wonder: "So what do you want, seraph?" Because everyone wants something, even if it's just the light of heaven, and you smile: "Just this dance, Albedo."  
  
Music is meaningless! The silence has swallowed all sounds, except apparently your voice, o seraph. Holy, holy, holy is God Almighty, and the universe would collapse except for the trisagion supporting its foundation; well, I can't argue that my trisagionists have been silenced, their last praises sung and their lips cold. (So has my world collapsed?) But you continue: "May I?" And I suppose that we can dance beatless, without time: "Why not?"  
  
And so it begins, with the same question that began eternity. (God said, "Why not?" and look, ten thousands of angels rejoice!) Except you aren't content with silence, because the psychometry of the heart tells me that the last person you danced  
  
(_Touch_)  
  
(_Go_)  
  
with was that worthless creature, the Executioner. Nigredo! "What kind of mud are you tracking through my house, seraph?" I accuse, even as we are step, step, step to the side already into a waltz. And when do they teach the angels to waltz? In heaven or on earth? You smile more broadly and don't answer me, and I wonder how pretty your smile will be if this turns into something a little more deadly than a little waltz! How self-assured will you be, seraph, in a Tötentanz with me? But the song you're humming has nothing to do with silence or death and everything to do with  
  
me?  
  
I'm wondering if I should be surprised, as this world collapses to the feel of my hand against yours, my hand on your shoulder, that everything seems so clear now. I can hear every note of the song you're humming, see every mote of dust that drifts in the slanting sunlight around us. I can feel your pulse beat in the living warmth beneath my fingers, and for once I don't want to end it.  
  
You stop humming away the silence for a moment, leaving only your pulse to define the rhythm of this dance. "Can you hear me?" you ask.  
  
I nod; like a man enraptured by Nigredo's voice: "Yes. What did you do to me?"  
  
You smile: "Call it a gift."  
  
And so-it-goes. We dance--one of us leads, but it's like trading the lead in a mirror dance, so not even we can tell anymore. Time is empty of meaning; the world, except for you and I, is defined only as the nebulous threads of that song you're still humming. Silence recedes, dark and cold recede and suddenly all the world's warm as a dragon's breath again. All the sky's that same turquoise blue, with you as the silver lining to every cloud.  
  
Yes, I could see how a man could come to love you.  
  
Is this what I've been missing? You--no, just someone like you. Bluer eyes and a temper that's snappish and cutting instead of this peace-be-upon-you you've always shown me. Yes, I could see how I could come to love you, given enough time. But there isn't time, no more time than you have breath to sustain the notes that you weave your voice through. (And this is an element of grief, to not have enough time to say everything that needs to be said.)  
  
I let you lead me back to where we began, and for a moment we stand, staring eye to eye across a gulf of a few inches, the last threads of that song--that _Song_--hanging golden in the air. And as your benediction upon it: "Fear not."  
  
For unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a savior--and this shall be a sign unto you. On earth, peace--good will toward men. Is this what I've been missing? A little reassurance I haven't been forgotten entirely?  
  
"Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil--" What was the rest of it? Time's back again, the enemy of mortal men; time, that old thief. Wicked time, how I hate it.  
  
But time's forestalled just a moment longer by the strength of your smile, that uncreated light in your eyes. (Soaring, dying, round thy throne...) "--For I am with you." 


End file.
